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From Schweizerhalle To Baia Mare: The Continuing Failure Of International Law To Protect Europe's Rivers, Aaron Schwabach

Faculty Scholarship

Beginning on January 31, 2000, at least 100,000 cubic meters of highly polluted water escaped from a tailings dam at the Aurul gold mine in Baia Mare, Romania. The water flowed into the Somes, Tisza, and Danube Rivers, causing enormous environmental damage. Most of the damage occurred in Hungary, downstream from Baia Mare. Hungarian politicians called the spill “the first, most serious environment[al] catastrophe in the 21st century,” and “the worst ecological disaster in central Europe since Chernobyl in 1986.”

More striking than the resemblance to the Chernobyl disaster, though, was the resemblance to another 1986 environmental catastrophe: the Sandoz …